Updates and Newsletters: The main news stories from the major sources, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Michael Novakhov ("Mike Nova") | Public RSS Feeds on the various topics of Global Security | Topics oriented news reviews

Monday, February 8, 2016

A hacker group calling itself DotGovs tweeted on Monday a link to what it claims is a directory of over 20,000 FBI employees. The data, encrypted with the password "lol," includes names, job titles, phone numbers, states, and ...

Cyberattack targets both FBI, Homeland Security departmentWLS-TVAt the FBI, 20,000 employee names, job titles, email addresses and phone numbers were found on this dark Internet site called Crypto Bin, which also lists the personnel data for 9,000 homeland security employees with credit given to Palestine, Ramallah ...

Engage with Russia, and with North KoreaThe Guardian (blog)North Koreans gather at the Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate a satellite launch Monday, Feb. 8, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. People in Pyongyang danced and watched fireworks the day after a rocket launch that has been strongly condemned by many ...and more »

The chances of a diplomatic resolution are slim while Assad’s forces are far from victory – even with Russian help

Syria’s war is facing a critical few days as refugees stream from Aleppo towards the Turkish border and Russian airstrikes help Bashar al-Assad’s forces advance, with diplomatic moves still showing no sign of concrete measures to relieve the suffering of ordinary people.

International hand-wringing has failed to trigger decisive action with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, making clear her concern on Monday. “We have been ... not just appalled but horrified by what has been caused in the way of human suffering for tens of thousands of people by bombing – primarily from the Russian side,” she said after meeting Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu in Ankara.

At least nine civilians and 16 rebel fighters have been killed as security forces battle militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, the army and the region's main political party said on Monday. Violence has raged in the region since the collapse of peace talks last July aimed at ending a three-decade PKK insurgency. Some of the worst clashes have been in the town of Cizre and the Sur district of Diyarbakir, the region's biggest city, where security forces have imposed a 24-hour curfew. Ten of the 16 rebels killed on Sunday were in Cizre and six were in Sur, the military said on its website, adding that this brought the militants' total death toll in the two places to 749 since December. A plainclothes police officer was also gunned down on Monday in the town of Yuksekova near the Iraqi border, media reported. In the center of Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, police used water cannon and tear gas on Monday to break up a protest against the Cizre operations, witnesses said. Several people were detained, Dogan News Agency said. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking at a joint news conference in the capital Ankara with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the Cizre operations may draw to a close in the next few days. "It is obvious that (the PKK) is implementing methods to destabilize cities in Turkey. In this regard, Cizre is a critical town, situated so close to the (Syrian) border, exploitable for weapons and terrorists to cross," he said. The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which has Kurdish origins and is the southeast's biggest party, named nine civilians who had been killed in Cizre since Friday, bringing the death toll to 127 civilians since December. Many wounded Davutoglu dismissed claims that civilians have been targeted and also denied reports that several wounded people had died after spending days stranded in buildings in Cizre. Authorities had sent ambulances to collect the wounded - mainly PKK members - but the poor security situation had prevented them for reaching the hurt, he said. The HDP said late on Sunday its lawmakers had not heard from a group of 15 wounded people, who have been sheltering in a basement in Cizre's Cudi district along with seven dead bodies for more than a week. It said nine more people had died in a fire in a different basement in the area and that they had also not heard from wounded people there for the last two days. The protest in Istanbul occurred after the HDP called for a march near Taksim Square, the city's tourism and transportation hub, to draw attention to the situation in Cizre, Dogan said. Along with Turkey, the United States and European Union also designate the PKK as a terrorist organization.

‘The Russians will kill us all,’ say civilians forced to flee airstrikes in Aleppo but faced with gunfire at border with Turkey

Opposition fighters in Aleppo’s besieged east have said they are counting on the military support of Arab states, which announced they will send ground forces to Syria to save them from defeat at the hands of Russian bombers and pro-Assad militias.

With the war now in a decisive phase, rebel groups said they cannot hold ground without similar weapons and manpower to those of the Assad loyalists who continue to narrow a gap around the north of the city, while thousands more refugees made their way to the Turkish border.

I will keep trying till I reach Turkey. I have no choice. The Russians will kill us all

In continuation of our alumni interview series, we talked with Title VIII-supported Research ScholarNicole Eaton to hear her reflections on her fellowship. Dr. Eaton, Assistant Professor of History at Boston College, is writing a book on politics, everyday life, and the German-Soviet encounter in Königsberg-Kaliningrad. See the discussion below on the broader context of German and Soviet occupations, postwar urban rebuilding, nationalities policies, and forced migrations.

The U.S. Justice Department has charged the wife of a now-deceased Islamic State leader for her alleged role in last year's death of American aid worker Kayla Mueller. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar and her husband, Abu Sayyaf, are accused of holding Mueller and other women captive in their home. U.S. officials say Mueller was subjected to repeated sexual abuse by IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during her captivity. Mueller was killed in February 2015. Bahar, also known as Umm Sayyaf, "knew how Mueller was treated by Baghdadi when Mueller was held against her will in Sayyaf's home,'' federal prosecutors said Monday. Abu Sayyaf was killed in a Delta Force commando raid of his Syrian compound in June, and his wife was turned over to Iraqi authorities for prosecution. Umm Sayyaf allegedly admitted to FBI agents last summer that she was chiefly responsible for Mueller and other hostages while her husband traveled. On those occasions, she acknowledged hosting Islamic State members and al-Baghdadi at her home. Sayyaf told interrogators that al-Baghdadi "owned" Mueller during her captivity at the Sayyaf residence, and acknowledged that "owning" is equivalent to slavery. The Justice Department said it plans to "pursue justice for Kayla and for all American victims of terrorism." If convicted, Sayyaf faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Mr. Kadyrov, a former militia commander, appeared on Russia’s Channel 1 “News of the Week” program, saying Chechen forces are on the ground and have suffered casualties. The program showed well-equipped and heavily armed Chechen fighters in live shooting drills at a military training range outside of Mr. Kadyrov’s hometown of Tsenteroi.

The Chechen leader didn’t give specifics about the number of Chechens operating in Syria.

“There have been losses,” Mr. Kadyrov said on the program. “They left so that life would be peaceful in the future in Chechnya and Russia as a whole.”

Video footage showed men in camouflage with Russian and Chechen flags on their uniforms shooting in an outdoor training center. Mr. Kadyrov himself picked up a rifle to show off his shooting skills.

“They collect information...locate bombing targets and appraise their results,” said a program announcer of the operation in Syria.

Chechnya has provided manpower before to advance the Kremlin’s foreign policy aims: Some Chechens loyal to the Kremlin have fought on the side of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Kadyrov is known for over-the-top displays of loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Fighters loyal to Mr. Kadyrov appeared in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea before its annexation from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, and he has acknowledged that Chechens have fought in eastern Ukraine.

Chechnya itself has suffered through two separatist wars that started in the 1990s, the second of which brought the region back under firm Kremlin control. Since taking over regional leadership, Mr. Kadyrov has built a large and loyal security apparatus.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has been quick to deny claims from human-rights groups that Russia’s bombing campaign has been responsible for civilian deaths in Syria. Mr. Kadyrov echoed that line, saying his special-operations forces in Syria were there to confirm the accuracy of Russian bombs.

The Kremlin has credited Mr. Kadyrov with successfully clamping down on an Islamist insurgency in his home region, although he has been accused of torture and kidnapping in his fight against militants, claims he denies. Mr. Kadyrov has also taken on a larger role in domestic politics, portraying himself as an attack dog against the government’s fractured and shrinking opposition. Last week, he posted a provocative picture on his Instagram account: cross hairs superimposed over a video of an opponent of Mr. Putin, Mikhail Kasyanov.

Top Russian officials have expressed concern that militants fighting in Syria will return with fighting experience to fan the flames of insurgency in the north Caucasus. Mr. Kadyrov said late last year that 500 Chechens had left the north Caucasus region to fight in the ranks of Islamic State.

On Monday, the Federal Security Service said they detained seven Russian and Central Asian citizens in the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg who had joined Islamic State and planned on carrying out terrorist attacks in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the news agency Interfax reported. A statement from Russia’s Federal Security Service intelligence agency said the leader of the group had come to Russia from Turkey.

Chechen spies loyal to the Kremlin have infiltrated Islamic State in Syria and are gathering intelligence the Russian air force uses to select bombing targets, the hardline leader of Chechnya told Russian state TV.

Ramzan Kadyrov, who as a close ally of President Vladimir Putin keeps tight control of a mostly Muslim region with a history of rebellion against Moscow, said Chechens had trained alongside Islamic State fighters at the start of the Syrian war.

He said Chechnya's "best fighters" had been sent to Syria to gather information about militants' structure and numbers.

"Thanks to their work as agents the Russian air force is successfully destroying terrorist bases in Syria."

When asked about the comments, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, declined to confirm the presence of Chechen forces in Syria. Kadyrov's full interview on the subject is due to be broadcast on state TV on Wednesday.

Islamic State in Syria posted grisly footage in December of the murder of a man it said was from Chechnya and had been spying on them for Russian intelligence. Kadyrov, himself accused by campaign groups of human rights abuses, quickly denied the man was a spy.

Chechens opposed to Russian rule, many hardened by combat in two wars with Moscow, are known also to be fighting as committed jihadis on the side of Islamic State in Syria. Moscow fears they may return and mount attacks in Russia, as they have threatened.

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Sept. 30 and has set up an air base to complement an existing naval facility. It has infantry and armor there to protect its assets and has military trainers and advisers working with the Syrian army.

Western diplomats have said Russian special forces are also active in Syria; Russian authorities have been coy on that.

But state TV, in a teaser broadcast on Sunday evening ahead of the full program later this week, said the time had now come to talk about the forces who were helping coordinate Russian air strikes in Syria "at the cost of their own lives".

It showed a training camp in Chechnya, which it said was where soldiers now active in Syria had honed their skills.

Hundreds of heavily armed men with four-wheel drive vehicles were shown lined up, with one man shown repeatedly firing a pistol as he navigated what looked like a special urban warfare training course.

Kadyrov, a former Chechen rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, was also shown firing a high-powered weapon at a target himself. He said his men in Syria had suffered losses.

Kadyrov said in October he wanted to send Chechen servicemen to Syria to take part in "special operations" but would only do so if Putin authorized such a deployment.

Russian forces fought two brutal wars against Chechen insurgents; but the region, though it still faces limited low-level islamist insurgency, has now been given a large measure of autonomy within Russia and been rebuilt. Kadyrov says he is one of Putin's staunchest supporters.

Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that any request to confirm participation of Russian servicemen in the ground operation in Syria should be addressed to the Russian defense and law enforcement authorities.

"I proceed from the fact that we have the Russian Armed Forces, the Interior Ministry troops, but they are [Russian] federal [forces]. And therefore, the question about confirmation of any location of particular servicemen should be addressed to the respective state agencies," he told reporters.

"We shouldn't be talking about the Chechen special task force, but respective federal forces," Peskov went on.

This is how Peskov commented on the news piece that was broadcast by Russian television on Feb. 7, in which Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that the Chechen special task force trained in Chechnya has long been located in Syria to counteract the 'Islamic State'.

Also, Peskov recalled that "the Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly elaborated on who is in Syria, since when and what their job is there."

"I suggest being guided by the respective statements of the Russian Defense Ministry in the first place. Defense Ministry officials have repeatedly provided comprehensive information about who is in Syria and for what purpose," Peskov said.

Chechen spies loyal to the Kremlin have infiltrated Islamic State in Syria and are gathering intelligence the Russian air force uses to select bombing targets, the hardline leader of Chechnya told Russian state TV.

Ramzan Kadyrov, who as a close ally of President Vladimir Putin keeps tight control of a mostly Muslim region with a history of rebellion against Moscow, said Chechens had trained alongside Islamic State fighters at the start of the Syrian war.

He said Chechnya's "best fighters" had been sent to Syria to gather information about militants' structure and numbers.

"Thanks to their work as agents the Russian air force is successfully destroying terrorist bases in Syria."

When asked about the comments, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, declined to confirm the presence of Chechen forces in Syria. Kadyrov's full interview on the subject is due to be broadcast on state TV on Wednesday.

Islamic State in Syria posted grisly footage in December of the murder of a man it said was from Chechnya and had been spying on them for Russian intelligence. Kadyrov, himself accused by campaign groups of human rights abuses, quickly denied the man was a spy.

Chechens opposed to Russian rule, many hardened by combat in two wars with Moscow, are known also to be fighting as committed jihadis on the side of Islamic State in Syria. Moscow fears they may return and mount attacks in Russia, as they have threatened.

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Sept. 30 and has set up an air base to complement an existing naval facility. It has infantry and armor there to protect its assets and has military trainers and advisers working with the Syrian army.

Western diplomats have said Russian special forces are also active in Syria; Russian authorities have been coy on that.

But state TV, in a teaser broadcast on Sunday evening ahead of the full program later this week, said the time had now come to talk about the forces who were helping coordinate Russian air strikes in Syria "at the cost of their own lives".

It showed a training camp in Chechnya, which it said was where soldiers now active in Syria had honed their skills.

Hundreds of heavily armed men with four-wheel drive vehicles were shown lined up, with one man shown repeatedly firing a pistol as he navigated what looked like a special urban warfare training course.

Kadyrov, a former Chechen rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, was also shown firing a high-powered weapon at a target himself. He said his men in Syria had suffered losses.

Kadyrov said in October he wanted to send Chechen servicemen to Syria to take part in "special operations" but would only do so if Putin authorized such a deployment.

Russian forces fought two brutal wars against Chechen insurgents; but the region, though it still faces limited low-level Islamism insurgency, has now been given a large measure of autonomy within Russia and been rebuilt. Kadyrov says he is one of Putin's staunchest supporters.

Members of Chechnya's special forces have been fighting against the Islamic State in Syria since the terrorist organization's formation, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said during an interview aired on the Rossiya 1 television channel Sunday.

Kadyrov claimed that Chechen special agents were sent to Syria, infiltrated the Islamic State and are now acting as informants for the Russian military campaign in the country.

Kremlin officials declined to comment on Kadyrov's claims. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that all the information about the activities of the Russian military in Syria has been already made public by the country's Defense Ministry, the RBC news website reported Monday.

Russia has conducted a campaign of air strikes in Syria since Sept. 30, maintaining that the operation is aimed at the Islamic State.

President Vladimir Putin last year said up to 7,000 people from Russia and former Soviet states were fighting in the Middle East for the Islamic State, a terrorist organization banned in Russia.

Many of them come from the North Caucasus, where a low-level Islamist insurgency has simmered since the 1990s.

BRUSSELS—The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is developing a new strategy to speed decision-making and improve its response to the kind of unconventional warfare the West says Russia has used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

NATO is hoping to complete the strategy in time for a July summit of alliance leaders in Warsaw. In anew effort at cooperation, officials have been working with the European Union, which is putting together its own plans.

Moscow has minimized its role in the 2014 takeover of Crimea and largely denied sending covert forces to work with separatists in eastern Ukraine. But NATO documented the presence of Russian equipment and forces in eastern Ukraine—arguing Moscow was using deception, covert action and threats to achieve its goals of weakening the government.

Alliance officials believe any sort of overt invasion of Poland or the Baltic states by Russia is highly unlikely, but using more subtle means to weaken an allied government is a real threat.

A new hybrid warfare playbook would attempt to lay out the kind of assistance the alliance would provide should a member state come under outside pressure from Russia or another country. Such support could include sending cyber experts to help respond to computer hacking attacks, communication specialists to counter propaganda or even the deployment of NATO’s rapid reaction spearhead force.

NATO was built to address the confrontations of the Cold War and the threat of overt military invasion by the Soviet Union. The more subtle techniques would be meant to try to avoid provoking the alliance to act under its collective defense provision, in which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, NATO officials said.

As a result, the alliance must draft a new approach and improve its ability to make decisions quickly, officials said.

“Hybrid warfare is a combination of many different kinds of activities,” said Czech Army Gen. Petr Pavel, the head of NATO’s military committee. “The primary purpose is to create an influence that is strong enough, but below the threshold of [collective defense provision] Article 5, so they achieve the goals without provoking the enemy or opponent to initiate a defense response.”

Officials said hybrid threats could take many forms including support for dissident political movements, propaganda broadcasts aimed at ethnic minorities, or moves to curtail energy supplies. In Crimea and Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, the hybrid threat also involved the buildup of a large conventional force conducting military exercises on the border.

As part of the effort to develop the strategy, when alliance defense ministers gather in Belgium on Wednesday, they will review possible hybrid scenarios the alliance could face. The discussion is designed to hone their ability to make decisions quickly.

“This discussion is working on the political decision-making, so our senior-most leaders can understand the kinds of decisions they need to make, and that often those decisions have to be made with imperfect intelligence, ambiguous data,” said U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander.

NATO’s most powerful deterrent is likely to be the use of its new rapid reaction force. The force isn’t intended to engage in combat, but would show the alliance’s support for a threatened member and hopefully persuade Moscow to lower the pressure.

NATO has taken steps to give Gen. Breedlove the authority to prepare the force to be deployed. But those reinforcements cannot move until the alliance’s political leaders give permission for the force to move.

Even after determining a hybrid attack is occurring, deciding to move the spearhead force wouldn’t be easy, officials said. In many situations, allies could worry such a move would risk the alliance being seen as the aggressor. NATO officials said it is critical for the alliance to craft a measured public relations strategy to go alongside any deployment of the force.

Russian officials say that NATO is too quick to see the hand of Moscow in legitimate political uprisings. They also argue NATO risks destabilizing Europe if it lowers the threshold of the alliance’s collective defense to include responding to so-called hybrid threats.

Russian Ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko said the alliance was using the threat of hybrid warfare “to find justifications for the alliance’s activities on its ‘eastern flank.’’’

Russian officials have repeatedly criticized NATO’s exercises in Poland and the Baltic states, as well as plans under consideration to boost its troop presence in the east.

While the Eastern European allies most worried about hybrid warfare are focused on the threat from Moscow, NATO officials said the new strategy would be applicable both to aggressive nations and to groups like Islamic State, which have demonstrated the ability to combine propaganda, terror attacks and conventional military force to take territory and intimidate populations.

Adam Thomson, the U.K. ambassador to NATO, said since hybrid threats are designed to avoid provoking a response or slowing that response, showing the ability to make swift decisions is key.

“Part of deterrence could be decisions at the very early stage about putting forces on the notice to move. That sends a signal,” Mr. Thomson said.

On Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with defense ministers from EU members to discuss the continuing work between the two organizations on hybrid threats. Mr. Stoltenberg said he sees “increased interest for cooperation between the European Union and NATO.”

The EU is working on developing a hotline with NATO to exchange information in the wake of a threat, an EU official said.

“We are not talking about joint efforts,” an EU official said in an email. “The objective is to establish close links that enable the two organizations to work together to prevent or respond to hybrid threats swiftly.”

Some degree of communication is critical because the EU has many diplomatic and economic tools, like providing assistance if energy supplies are cut or imposing sanctions, that NATO lacks, officials said.

“Drawing on the instruments available to the two organizations, the community’s ‘deterrence toolbox’ becomes wider, from sanctions to NATO’s hard military power,” the EU official said. “Deterrence is mainly NATO’s business, but deterrence is not solely putting force on display: it is also about denying the benefits of an attack.”